Artwork by Zuni Maud.
Zuni Maud was born in 1885 in Vashlikov, near Bialystok. He emigrated to the Lower East Side of New York in 1905, where he changed his Christian name Sonny to the Yiddish Zuni. He held several odd jobs, from cigarmaker to messenger boy, while taking evening art classes. He joined a group of young intellectuals, who in 1907 founded the Yiddish literary magazine Di Yugnt . They later launched a satirical magazine with many drawings and caricatures, called Der Kibitzer. Maud's drawings consist of one or more panels, and are generally about Jewish life and politics. In 1910, he made his first comic story in Yiddish.
Between 1916 and 1920, Maud edited the entertainment section of Forverts, and his comics and cartoons subsequently appeared in the Zionist worker's paper Di Tsayt, the satirical weekly Der Groyser Kundes and several Yiddish children's magazines. He later teamed up with puppeteer Yosl Cutler and together they opened the Modicut studio near Union Square and launched an artistic collaboration that included a puppet theater. A versatile artist, Maud has also made many book illustrations, and painted and built sets for the Yiddish theater. His calligraphy has appeared on dozens of book covers and title pages. Zuni Maud passed away in 1956.
Zuni Maud, Bessie Maud and Yosl Cutler (1932).